A Song of Flame & Shadow - Eris x OC

The Dawn Court I

The next day Vel got word from Rhys. He wanted to move the meeting of the High Lords sooner. She agreed. Reluctantly. Not because it wasn't the right call, but rather because she dreaded the prospect of delivering the news to the others, particularly facing Tamlin or Beron again.

Three days. That's how long she had to decide on the location To inform all of them. To make the preparations.

Thesan had promised he would think about lending his territory for the meeting. Yet, Vel still had to complain and plead and make promises.

We have no other choice. Nobody will agree to going back Under the Mountain. And they won't want to go too far from neutral territory. Winter and Dawn are the only courts bordering the Middle and Kallias would not allow anyone into his territory after the horrors Amarantha had wrought upon its people. She said to him after landing on his open veranda, breathless after from flying in from the Summer Court.

I will throw my own wards over the palace.

I will make sure everyone behaves.

I will owe you a favor when you need it.

She was begging. Their time was running out. Their options had run out a while back. With only hours to spare the evening before, Thesan finally agreed that the meeting would take place in the Dawn Court. The letters were out and she spent the rest of the night warding the palace. Only a strict list of names could winnow through. Beron, at last, had deigned to join, likely at Eris's insistence. No word had come from Tamlin but she opted to leave an opening for him just in case. The crack of dawn found her putting the finishing touches on their defenses.

"Everything is in place," she said to Thesan in lieu of greeting as he joined her in the meeting room.

"There's one last thing," Thesan replied, his soft voice carrying over the breeze as he surveyed the servants fussing over the decor.

It would have been easy to mistake Thesan for a simple nobleman. There was none of the High Lord posturing the others seemed to fall so easily into. Vel found it refreshing, soothing even. She could always breathe more easily and speak more freely in Dawn. It helped that, just like her, his court had mostly remained neutral in every conflict.

Vel noted the servant who had walked in behind Thesan. He was holding what looked like a sheet of cloth draped over his arms. It flowed like liquid gold and a river of green, threatening to spill out of his hands.

Thesan picked up the cloth—or rather, the dress—carefully, holding it up for her to examine. Whatever material it had been tailored from made it feel alive. Just as it had tried to slip out of the servant's arms earlier, it now rustled in the delicate breeze, whispering as if to tell her a secret.

"It's beautiful," Vel breathed. The words didn't do it justice.

"The dress was made by Neith, our Master Weaver, from the silk of the Arachnae." Thesan smiled kindly as she ran her fingers over the impossibly smooth fabric.

The Arachnae, remnants of the beasts once unleashed upon the world by the Daglan, still roamed across the Solar Courts and the Middle, although Vel had never encountered one herself. They likely went to great lengths to avoid her presence.

These were colossal spiders, some the size of horses, known for luring unsuspecting Fae of old to their lairs before ensnaring them in their webs and draining them dry. Or so one version of their story went. Others said the Arachnae consume the soul, leaving empty vessels behind, still alive but not truly. And yet more faeries whisper that Arachnae fulfill wishes — at a cost.